Semper Fidelis
by renalan
Summary: Masaki through the years, looking for a place to belong. Slight one-sided Masaki/Tsubasa.


For Tarot. Gah, Hiba is so hard to write, but I hope I did Masaki justice here, at least. No warnings this time.

Do Enjoy~

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><p><strong>Semper Fidelis<strong>

Masaki's parents have that bad habit of thinking that life can be solved with money.

It's not that they're bad people, he thinks, though at this point, he doesn't know that much about them besides the way his mother's hand writing loops around the kanji of his name in her notes, or the way his father can not care about the world besides his stocks and the way the market is booming.

So they leave him alone and he doesn't think much of it, not when he doesn't have a great deal of experience with the alternatives. He has everything he could ask for anyway and, as such, at this point in his life he is happy.

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><p>Kurokawa Masaki starts playing soccer when he is seven. He doesn't quite know the rules, merely kicks around his new ball aimlessly for a while, trying to get it to go where he wills.<p>

He gets quite good at this, with all the time he has to himself and it's more freeing than any role playing game or fantasy book. Here he can fly, even if there are no wings to be seen.

Masaki meets them like this: The day is cloudless and humid and his shirt sticks more to his back with every movement. His kicks are off center, always at the extremes of his aim, never quite right and one of them causes the ball to bounce a little too hard off the edge of the goal. It spins around, light spots no longer blinding under the sunlight, but stained deep brown with mud, before catching in the air and rolling away from him.

Two boys pick it up where it stops, at the edges of the gate that marks off his home, and ask him to play.

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><p>It's easy to be a delinquent, running around with the freedom he's always had, but this time with purpose. The city streets are dyed purple in the half light and they run about the city with reckless abandon, bouncing soccer balls off buildings just to hear the sound.<p>

It gets them noticed like nothing else has, even if infamy will never be true fame. He can hear the whispers in the hallways and they make him feel more alive, some how. Like he can do anything.

He also hears when the whispers fade away and the voice of the crowd takes over again. It's not that they've been forgotten, he thinks, but that they are no longer worth remembering.

Masaki doesn't mind, as long as he has them then the rest of the world doesn't matter.

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><p>His fists ache tenderly and it hurts to close them anymore, lest the skin tighten and pull away. His face is worse: nose bleeding and bent, cheek torn hotly from the tarmac, mouth ripped at the left seam.<p>

Rokusuke has bandages laid, in little organized rows to treat them all, even though he's just as injured. He's the prepared one, the one they can count on when the world starts to crumble. Nothing like Masaki who could only watch and fight his way out.

But they were simply defending their home, nothing more or less, just making sure they always had a place to come back to and a place they could later leave behind. This is one of the decisions he will never regret.

Masaki watches them out of the corner of his eye, sees they way they laugh at scars and scrapes, the way they hold each other together such that they might break as one before they mend and realizes.

He's no leader, none of them are, but they doesn't have to be. They aren't a group who could fall apart so easily.

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><p>There is some point when the soccer they play between them selves falls short of the ideal, is lacking somehow where it used to be more than enough. It's not fun any more, not like this, not when there is no true competitive spirit. He just wants to play to his fullest, but it seems he has lost that too.<p>

Masaki turns in the club registration form to the teachers' office after school.

Their eyes are cold as they stare at him, not seeing anything besides what he's done, what all his team has done, and they laugh harshly enough to make him feel like he's fighting again, always the underdog. Masaki calms himself, forces every muscle in his body to relax, but this is all he will do.

No matter how much he wants this, he won't bow down to their whims, won't change himself just to be liked.

And besides, he doesn't think they could ever stop judging him no matter what he becomes.

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><p>Tsubasa doesn't ask for respect so much that his very presence demands it from them.<p>

His goals are bigger than all of them and for as much as he draws them back as one from where the seams had shown, they could never be the ones to hold him back. They want to see something bloom here, even if it isn't for them.

Masaki catches himself gazing at the edges of Tsubasa's hair where it gleams and wonders if this is as impossible as the dreams Tsubasa lives on.

But he's yelling now, calling his name from the opposite side of the field and showing him just where he belongs, just where he is needed.

Masaki looks out across the grass from his spot at this boys side and thinks this is all he ever really wanted.

He will follow Tsubasa to the edges of this world.


End file.
